I have to use a variety of Internet connections for our job sites, as most of the time they are remote. We deploy SonicWalls which work with 3G USB cards (although a lot of the times I will just deploy single 3G cards to users.)

As you mentioned about satellite, your 3G connections will still have to contend with the issue of the VPN tunnel being encrypted, which means the data cannot be compressed. Compression is used by both Satellite and 3G providers. Obviously, if your 3G connection is good (at LEAST 4 solid bars at the ROUTERS location - 3 bars or less is a killer) then the VPN overhead can be accommodated. But once you dip into the 3 bars or less area, the WAN speed is greatly reduced.

I have also found that the 3G signals can vary greatly depending on the exact location of the device. A site survey is a must and office trailers will play a role. I have found that a good Cellular "Booster" can help in a trailer situation. Please note: Cellular "Boosters" do not boost the signal at all but only take a good signal and "transmit" it to a different area. If you have 3 bars outside, you will be luckly to get 3 bars more than a few feet from the indoor transmitter. A strong Cellular signal is key in deploying 3G cards (and "boosters").

1st Post

I have to use a variety of Internet connections for our job sites, as most of the time they are remote. We deploy SonicWalls which work with 3G USB cards (although a lot of the times I will just deploy single 3G cards to users.)

As you mentioned about satellite, your 3G connections will still have to contend with the issue of the VPN tunnel being encrypted, which means the data cannot be compressed. Compression is used by both Satellite and 3G providers. Obviously, if your 3G connection is good (at LEAST 4 solid bars at the ROUTERS location - 3 bars or less is a killer) then the VPN overhead can be accommodated. But once you dip into the 3 bars or less area, the WAN speed is greatly reduced.

I have also found that the 3G signals can vary greatly depending on the exact location of the device. A site survey is a must and office trailers will play a role. I have found that a good Cellular "Booster" can help in a trailer situation. Please note: Cellular "Boosters" do not boost the signal at all but only take a good signal and "transmit" it to a different area. If you have 3 bars outside, you will be luckly to get 3 bars more than a few feet from the indoor transmitter. A strong Cellular signal is key in deploying 3G cards (and "boosters").

3G as a business primary connection really isn't a good option. I have done lots of testing, yes bonding multiple 3G connections is one way to handle it, but you still have high latency and 3G is very unstable. So much so that most bonding routers cannot handle it. The only device I have found that can and also has a number of great options is Viprinet, but they are very expensive and hard to work with. Peplink has a very great product, but it's one limitation is it's inability to handle 3G's instability.

I have done a lot of testing using 3G as a primary connection, also bonding up to 6 3G connections at the same time. I currently manage a Viprinet device running 6 3G connections at a time two from each of the major providers, used in a truck. It works and I can get up to 3meg of throughput, but most of the time only 3 or 4 are active and I average about 1meg of throughput. Also the latency remains high averaging 100 - 300ms. 4G is the better answer, but isn't available in most remote areas, they also don't give you a public IP address and bounce like crazy. So Satellite may still be your best answer, assuming a wired connection is not an option. If you can find T1 lines or DSL I think you would be better off using them and a Peplink or similar bonding/failover device.

load-balancing router will make a decision on a 3G WAN connection for a session and there is no way to pull back or recover from failure of that WAN link. You can get away with load-balancing in wired WANs (although still not ideal), but for 3G systems, you can get stuck on a terrible card (even though you had a better card at that moment).

I recommend 3G / 4G bonding routers as they will enable you to utilize all the available bandwidth from all the cards for a single session as well as will shield the outage (and low performance) effects of individual cards from your applications - makes a tremendous difference - www.mushroomnetworks.com/products.aspx?product_id=1003&tab=features

Attached white-paper is exactly about the comparison of a load balancing approach versus broadband bonding for wireless WANs, hope it helps...